VEXATIONS
By Mortarion75
PROLOGUE: One
"Hold my breath as I wish for death/Please, God, wake me!"
"Welcome to the center. It's rather incredible your will to exist extended this far."
The voice was somewhat familiar and yet totally alien, existing within his conscience and yet making no sound. Which was perfectly logical since there was nothing there - not even him. No sense of space or place...or even time. The absence of a physical body unnerved him, but the faint presence of another in the immense (or infinitely small, for all he knew) nothingness acted as a handle he could grip to keep defining himself. He could feel the slight but constant disgregation of hie ego by a force that could only be defined as entropy: it was difficult to grasp as it was mostly because he felt the arrow of time he was born in was literally folded in itself. "Before", "after" and "now" were melting in a soup of very unpleasant synesthesia. He focused on the faint red dot that was (he knew) the source of the voice.
"Where am I?" he asked. How, he didn't know. He had no mouth anymore, and yet he spoke.
"The center." the voice repeated patiently.
"Of what? Frame of reference needed. And who are you?" he replied not without a tinge of irritation. The red dot flickered faintly like a distant star - a chuckle.
"Of everything. Adjust your frame of reference to the infinitely small, up to and beyond a singularity. That's where you are. Of course -" the voice continued with a slightly amused tone "- if you follow the current theories, you were always at the center of your frame of reference and thus the observable universe...but where we are, there is no concept of space or time anymore. Only possible states. Here things simply are. Here, everything there is and can be, is. As for who I am... well, I'm you. Actually, a part of you. Your subconscious created me to give your self image something to define itself against and thus, survive. Again, I commend your will to exist and your sense of self. It's nothing short of amazing."
"So - " he asked "I'm literally talking to an imaginary friend?" The whole situation would have been absurd if not for the fact that he was literally reasoning without the hint of a body in sight and literally in a non-place. At least for the time being, he would have to accept it.
"Friend, yes. That I definitely am. Imaginary, no. What's imaginary here? I just told you that the only thing existing here is possibilities. I am one of those, which your mind plucked and gave form. I am as real as you are; EVERYTHING is real here...and it isn't. Had Schroedinger come here he'd be in bliss. This is literally the proof he was right all along."
"How did I get here?" he asked. True enough, his memory was kinda...fuzzy. Probably scrambled by the whole non-linearity of the situation. It felt like he already lived a thousand lives and yet none of them was real: except all of them were.
"You were run over by a truck hauling chainsaws." was the answer, accompanied by a brief bout of laughter. "You survived the initial impact but one of the chainsaws jumpstarted as it fell from the truck and gutted you in a rather spectacular fashion. Sick way to go, especially at the Shibuya overpass in sakura season and on the way to meet your fated love."
"Sure. Troll the poor wayward soul." he snorted. "Just what I was I would expect from..."
"Yourself?"
He fell silent for a second, then a defeated sigh echoed through all the multiverse (or at least that was what he liked to think). "Come on. The truth." he finally replied with an almost comically pleading tone.
"False vacuum." the voice replied, this time quiet and serious. "Your universe's energy equilibrium plummeted to almost maximum entropy and all the chemistry that makes life possible ceased. Everything there is now dark, cold and very much immobile. You didn't even realize what happened. It was...instantaneous."
"Oh." was all he could say, and "Oh." was all he could say for a while (or so he felt). The implications were horrible to a magnitude he could hardly fathom. His whole universe of origin was *erased*. "So...everyone who dies comes here?" he finally asked.
"Most disgregate before coming here. Some who have a very strong sense of self like you arrive intact and then go wherever they believe they should go - they almost never even realize where they are. This is...a place of passage. No one stays here for long. Either they go or entropy unravels them."
"So, why am I staying here then? Where do I go?" he asked.
The red light flickered again, pensive. "My best answer would be: wherever you want. You see, this looks like...a special case. Those who make it here are guided by instincts molded by cultural bias - their subconscious makes the choice for them. You...you are conscious. Which presents advantages and dangers of itself."
"Dangers?" he asked. "What kind of dangers?"
"You see" the voice answered "in theory, you could decide where to go. Every place, every time. Well, except your home. You COULD go back, but you'd literally die on arrival. That place can't sustain life anymore. And arriving earlier in the timeline will piss off Novikov's principle so you'll be canceled before popping in. But barring that, you can go anywhere and anywhen. There's a caveat: have you ever tried concentrating on ONE THING at the maximum detail possible for more than a second?"
He pondered the question silently, and almost immediately the red dot flared up like a distant orange hypergiant for a split second.
"Thought so." said the voice with a hint of smug "The human mind is a weird construct. The more you try to keep things at bay, the more they try to push their way in. In your case, one small intrusive thought during, shall we say, course plotting, could hurl you anywhere. Or outright destroy you. So - yes, infinite possibilities but in practice it's a huge gamble. You have way less control than you would need. Your subconscious works against you."
"But" he replied "you also said that I cannot stay here. It's literally a non-choice for me: everyone would take a chance rather than sit in a corner and wait for annihilation. So, anyplace is good as long as it's not here, no? Even if I die, I still have a higher chance of survival than remaining here."
"That goes without saying. I never said you should stay - I merely gave you the information you needed to make the best choice. What to do with it is up to you."
He sighed, trying to decide on what to focus his mind on. Too many choices were just as paralyzing as not having any, apparently. He could simply wish himself into a universe that was the exact copy of his old one - bar the sudden annihilation - and resume his old life. After all, he was not in a bad spot. He started concentrating - and to avoid intrusive thoughts as much as he could, he tried to embrace as many memories of his old life he tried, not opposing anything but embracing every thought in an organic whole.
Everything around him started to distort and vibrate - and he begun to feel a pull, a vector sending him hurtling towards an imago that wavered somewhere in his field of vision. Distance was contracting and distending to infinity as he moved in what looked like a tunnel made of distorted space - all with the familiar, reassuring feeling of movement: space and time existing along an orderly arrow again.
The skyline kept wavering in front of him; and though the image was still somewhat flat and spatially distorted, colors and sounds were rapidly becoming more vivid, more real. The smell of smog and street trash that assailed his nostrils was almost welcome. "Home." he thought. "Or the best approximation thereof."
The red dot was slipping away on what appeared to be an event horizon, shimmering in quiet approval behind him as he barrelled forward towards the mirage.
"So long, pal." the voice said. "Looks like you made it."
He smiled slightly, turning his mind's eye back for a second as the memories flowed inside him, guiding his trail like a shining polar star; his childhood, his friends...and then, just like a horrendous self fulfilling prophecy, a random phrase - just a bit of banter online with one of his friends, really - popped into his mind.
Ryoma has unlocked sassy Toga.
Nothing but a tidbit from online roleplaying. Just that.
The conduit started shaking and twisting like a snake having a seizure, the mirage of the city morphing into spirals and explosions of colors - a cacophony of sounds, sights and forces trying to rip him apart.
"No no no no no no no no NO NO NO NO..." he gasped desperately. His mind reached out to the quickly receding red dot as if he could grasp onto it to save himself - just by instinct, as if it was the only solid hold he had - but the pull was getting stronger and washing on him like a tidal wave. His grip was vice like and he felt the red dot being dragged down with him, away from the even horizon and down in the depth of the whirlpool. With him.
"You MORON." was the last thing he heard before everything exploded around him and he lost consciousness.
CHAPTER ONE: Stranger in a Strange Land
"Left me in this place here/Lost and far from home..."
Groaning, he shook his head and squinted his eyes tight as the impact of sunlight made his head throb. His throat felt like sandpaper, the air in his lungs burned like he was breathing napalm.
"Easy there, you idiot. You'll puke." the voice reprimanded. While clearly annoyed, the tone was showing a modicum of genuine concern.
"Wha? GAH... You...you still here?" he croaked. The light was hurting his eyes even if they were tightly shut and all his body was pulsating with a dull, nauseous pain. "Whe...where..."
"Yeah, I'm still with you. You literally dragged me down with you, remember? Come on, dolt, shake the cobwebs. I need you alert if not functioning. Soon you'll settle. Deep breaths."
"S...settle?" he replied weakly. The lung pain was slowly subsiding - each breath was coming easier now - together with the feeling of a body settling in. His perception of himself was returning in the physical sense; it did felt somewhat wrong to him, like slipping his foot in a new shoe that needed breaking in. He begun to have an inkling about his current situation. He was - clearly - alive in the biological sense... but this wasn't his original body.
"Exactly. Ding ding ding! A gold star for the kid in the back!" the voice chimed in. "The good: you're not dead, you're in a new body and if you allow me to be selfish, you dragged me into existence with you - of which I am grateful. I like existing. The bad: you aren't where you wanted to be. Faaaaar from it."
"So...so where am I?"
The voice giggled. "Look around. You'll get the idea."
Slowly, he managed to open his eyes and focus. He was slumped on a bench in a park, apparently in the middle of a modern looking city. Everything looked so... unusually vivid. Lines and shapes defined, colors so bright, and kinetic movement... he blinked twice as his perceptions adjusted further. There was some sort of dissonance between far and near...like, the father he looked the duller and more undefined shapes and movement were. And there was somethin odd about the people...
He looked down at his hands, flexing the fingers. One - the right - was crisscrossed by some sort of black geometric pattern - a spiderweb of lines converging into a small red gem embedded in the flesh. His mind took in all the details until it finally dawned on him.
"Ah, fuck. I'm in an anime." he groaned. "I suppose this little red gem is you. Stylish, though a tad edgy."
"I'm you. Whatever shape I took, you gave it to me. I do suppose part of you remained an edgelord, then." the voice replied dryly.
"Point well taken. So how do I call you, O figment of my own imagination?"
"Whatever you like, I guess. My identity as it stands now is kind of a work in progress. A name would be nice, though. Names shape things."
"Prometheus shalle ye be then. I find it fitting." he declared after a minute of silence.
"Prometheus. I...like it."
He sighed, finally having the strength to stand up and look around. He was feeling wobbly, but bit by bit his energy was returning to an acceptable level and the pain was subsiding. "Okay. Now, time to pinpoint where we are. Second, find shelter and food." He looked down at his feet: a white T-shirt with the words "SOUTH EAST" printed on it, light blue jeans and white sneakers. "At least I materialized with some clothes on."
"Your subconscious reconstructed an image of yourself you'd be comfortable with." Prometheus added, helpfully. "Not exactly what you are. More like what you would be if you were in the Matrix."
"Noted. That doesn't solve our more pressing problem, though. I hope I can make myself understood, too. I don't speak Japanese."
"That's a non-issue. My presence alone will translate any language both ways. Also, food and shelter are non-issues." Prometheus replied not without pride.
"Oh? How, pray tell?" He asked raising a rather skeptical eyebrow.
"When you pulled me here, you did not bring all of me. Think of me as a string that connects the me in the gem to the me who is the red dot at the Center. This gives me - and by extension, you...us, if you will...some interesting perks. The other side of me is still in contact with everything. And I mean motherfucking everything. Cheeseburger?"
He nodded wordlessly, and with a slight popping sound a wrapped cheeseburger literally appeared from thin air in the palm of his right hand. Hot, juicy and very real. His eyes widened as he immediately dug into it; it was as if this body never knew what hunger was until five minutes ago. Which was, come to think of it, the exact truth.
"Neat, huh?" Prometheus quipped.
"So we can literally materialize anything?" he asked with his mouth full. "Money, documents, weapons...?"
"The sky's the limit. Ask and ye shall receive."
He threw the wrapped in a nearby wastebasket and looked around again, looking for a telltale sign, a building, anything that would help him recognize the place he was in. "Excellent. The moment I get my bearings..." he muttered, and then he saw it. Twin buildings on a forested hills, covered in shining glass. on the other side of the city under the blue sky and the billowy clouds.
"Binoculars." he muttered. The item appeared into his hand just like the cheeseburger and he almost immediately peered at the blue arch at the entrance, his lips compressing into a thin line.
"UA high. We're in Musutafu." he sighed.
"No shit, Sherlock." Prometheus chuckled. "Remember which image set you off course? Kinda obvious we'd end up here."
"And when were you planning on telling me?" he snorted in irritation. "I'm already lost as I am, I don't need you working against me."
"Oh come on. It's not that you wouldn't have realized it in the next ten minutes. Besides, you would have done the same just for shiggles and you know it. It's harmless fun, man."
He sighed - a long, deep and somewhat defeated sound from his lips as he casually threw the military grade equipment in the trashcan and rolled his eyes. "All right, fine. Let's head downtown, settle in and hope we aren't involved in a villain attack, a terrorist takeover or some other shit."
"Or get jumped in an alleyw-"
"SHUT THE FUCK UP. NOW."
"Yes, O fearless leader. Touchy, ain't we."
Without even answering, he started walking out of the park and into the city.
